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“I don’t care about any of that. I care about you lying to me. Pretending to…”
He stopped short of finishing that sentence. He wasn’t looking at her.
“I wasn’t…” Piper said, struggling herself with the words. “I wasn’t pretending. Not about that.”
“Don’t,” Pony said. “Don’t.”
“Listen. When I first came into the MC, the truth is, I was thrilled. Out of the boring office, into the field, and I could be Piper the Wild Girl. And all the while, I’d be finding out information that would bring down the most dangerous criminals out there.”
“So glad to be a part of your fun.”
“Except it didn’t turn out to be any of that. I started looking and listening and the MC wasn’t at all like I was told. And then I met you, and…
“And what?”
“And you were nothing like you were supposed to be. You weren’t some evil drug-dealing killer who I’d be happy to throw into prison. You were… you were everything…”
Again, she stopped. The words felt like they were too big to be let out.
“Everything what?” Pony said.
She let the words out in a rush. “Everything I wanted in a man. And the more time I spent with you, the more I forgot about the case, and the more I wanted to just be with you.”
“Building on a lie,” he said.
“Not how I felt about you,” Piper said. “That wasn’t a lie. That was never a lie. And more and more, I saw that you were no criminal who was in league with Navarro. Neither was the restof the MC. And I kept looking for more and more reasons to tell Harris to get me out of that clubhouse and leave the MC alone.”
Pony was silent, not looking at her.
“None of this…” Piper said, “none of this was supposed to go like this. You were supposed to be these awful killers and drug dealers who were working with Navarro and the worst of the worst of the cartels. Instead, your MC is nothing like that and you…”
Once again, the words felt like speed bumps, stumbling blocks to let him know how she felt.
“So there I was, stuck in the middle,” she said. “And I didn’t know what to do. I signed up to fight bad guys. And instead, all I got was my boss lying to me and putting me in a position where I was going to hurt good people.”
Pony still said nothing, but was giving off the energy of a wound-up spring. Piper couldn’t tell if she was getting through to him or only making things worse.
“I don’t know if any of this is making any sense,” she said.
Pony let out a roar of rage that shook the room and Piper’s spine, sending a sudden jolt of terror through her. She’d never seen Pony like this. She’d never so much as heard him raise his voice. But now, he let out a roar like a lion and began pacing back and forth across the room, clenching and unclenching his fists until he finally smashed both of them down on the desk.
Piper stayed perfectly still.
“God damn it,” Pony finally said, no longer pacing. “God damn it! I wish it didn’t make sense. I wish it didn’t.”
“Pony?”
“I wish it were easy,” Pony said, still not looking at her. “I wish I could just hate you and forget you. I wish you were some evil, hateful bitch that I could write off like nothing. But I can’t. I can’t. The truth is… a lot of what you said does make sense.Fuck, rewind my life a few years and I might be saying a lot of the same things.”
“What do you mean?”
“I mean, why do you think I joined the Army?” he said. “Signed up and shipped out to fight the big bad War On Terror?”
Piper said, quietly, “Because you believed you would make a difference.”
“Because I believed I would make a difference,” he said. “And I won’t bore you with the details, but suffice it to say, shit didn’t end up being as advertised. Turns out, there’s always people up high who are willing to manipulate the idealistic for their own ends. Twist those ideals and ruin them along the way.”
“Sounds familiar.”
